Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Hey ladies, I hope you had a spootacular Halloween! I'd like to share my JBS Mercantile November layouts with you. This first page is made with the main kit and Antiquarian. I thought the red on red was really pretty. I started out with the red and black flowers on one of the cream patterned papers but decided I like the slightly more subtle look on the dark solid red on the light patterned red. You know, I think this flowery layout looks masculine :) Do you think? I typed the text out on a 12 x 12 page template I made in Mac's Pages program then ran the red woodgrain printer through my large format printer to print the text directly onto the page (as I'm sure you infer). I had quite a bit to say but I didn't want it to stand out like for example by putting it on a white text block so that's what I came up with. It takes a bit of planning but it's worth it for a special page, I think.

Of course the flowers were cut with my Silhouette. I think there are probably about 5 flower spray cuts here then I added a few extra sprigs here and there to fill in. I also made copies of some of the vintage paper so it would be strong enough to run through my Silhouette so I could cut patterned paper titles from it. I didn't completely glue down the flower sprays - I glued a few key spots on there and left the rest to organically lift off the page. :)

This layout I really like. I like the stuff I mixed together here from the kits - kind of the stuff with kid energy I think :) I had the butterfly vellum already cut and just sitting in my floor so I grabbed that to act as a base for the rest of the collage style layout. I used the November Kit Cuts from Lisa Dickinson which are available for purchase at the Mercantile store. I've been really enjoying printing 5 x 7 photos lately because they're big enough to really enjoy the details and draw attention to the pictures (vs. the scrapbook goodies) yet still have enough room to play around with your elements and make a design statement or have room to tell a story, you see what I mean. Here I've used two 5 x 7's. This is a mixture from several kits: main kit, Artisan, and Antiquarian. And I love love how that golden yellow mixes with red, black, and white.

The expression on Ava's face cracks me up. It looks like she doesn't want to hug her brother which is so far from the truth. She loves him - she was probably scared he was going to make her stop :)

I love these black dymo label looking stickers from Artisan.

My last page is showing Zane in his costume last Halloween. I've held off scrapping these photos because I think red, orange, and black is a challenging color scheme - I'm not sure why I think that. Anyhow, when I saw the JBS kit was red and black I knew it was now or never on these pics. I misted the file folder page from the mini album kitorange and cut in in half to bring orange into the kit. I kept the red minimal just to pull the colors from his costume. I really like the curve of that vintage billhead over the larger picture - so it makes a nice design in that spot. And how lucky was I that what I was saying in the title actually fit as the same width as my two columns??? I had it all laid out without being glued down so I did have fudge room but I really didn't need it much.

My Halloween village is still up on my dining table so I've had to move photography location. I'm absolutely totally nutso obsessive about taking pictures of my layouts. Ask my friend Doris. It's really rather bad. Anyhow, I was curious, do you like to photograph your pages just as the actual page with the sides all cropped or do you like to photograph it standing on a tabletop, etc.? I see most people photograph the layout only. I used to do that but I got to where I like to have it more 3D looking in the photograph. Anyhow, on the second layout I started out doing layout only, non tabletop, since my village is in the way but it just didn't look right with the other two layouts - this first one and the last one. Then I didn't want to re-do the middle one because the color was right along with the sharpness - it was too good to mess around with (especially after the minimal adjust layer with photo filer to like 20 percent strength to knock out a very slight green cast). Just curious what your take was on that. I personally think the top and bottom layouts look prettier the way they're photographed. Especially if the layout is white and you get the levels right - the white bleeds in with the website background. Thanks for listening to me ramble on that subject. Told you it was near to my heart. Sometime I'll share my levels tricks with you (if you don't already have methodology there - that would be a good post showing straight out of the camera and what I end up with). Then I save for web then I open the smaller saved for web file and sharpen that one.

Well, see ya next time. I've got gift ideas to share using JBS next week.